stigmatize

If you stigmatize someone, you have given that person a label — and it's usually a label that is limiting in some way.

In Ancient Greece, a stigma was a brand burned into a slave or a criminal's skin to symbolize disgrace. In the 1500s, the word stigmatize meant literally "to brand or tattoo." Nowadays, to stigmatize is to shame or brand a person in a more symbolic way.